


Behind the Smile

by Aria Serif (Mysterie)



Series: Alternates [20]
Category: Undertale
Genre: Drabbles, body swapped
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:26:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27048673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mysterie/pseuds/Aria%20Serif
Summary: You're no one special. Just another human living with a single parent. Your life is pretty boring, or so you think, but then one day you wake up and it's not in your bed...
Series: Alternates [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/288569
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	1. First Morning

There was a chill in the air, it was going to be fall soon. There was the bit of chill in the air the day before, you wouldn't know about today because today was a day you had off, but that didn't mean that you were outside. On the contrary, you were inside, because while today was a day that you had to yourself you still had to do things around the house. It wasn't such a bad thing really, you pulled your weight by doing chores around the house while at the age of twenty five you still got to live rent-free with your father, saving up money as best as you could. Thing was, with the economy the way it was on the down hill slope - thanks to the current president and his whimsical spending of the nation's resources and what not, you had barely been able to find a job at all. So of course when you did find one it wasn't your dream job. Those years in college seemed like a waste of time as your job had nothing to do with the degree you'd spent so much time putting hours of studying into just to get. You knew things could be worse, but you also knew things could be better.

So you just sighed to yourself and decided that this was going to be yet another day of 20XX. 

You had laundry to do, dishes, then you'd have some time to yourself to do some art, maybe some writing or reading... or maybe you'd pick up that video game you'd been neglecting since you'd gotten that job because you just hadn't been motivated to play. So you opened your eyes and stared up at the ceiling. You didn't remember seeing that crack in the ceiling... was it there yesterday? You yawn and stretch a little, your mind still hazy with sleep as you consider if you want to sleep a bit more or not. You hear a door slam. Well, dad's obviously in a mood... but since when did he slam a door that hard? You don't recall him doing so. You knew your dad had a temper, but he didn't usually slam a door that hard even when he was angry and he'd never laid a hand on you in temper. Sure you'd gotten spankings as most normal children did, but that wasn't so unusual. It was never hard enough to leave lasting marks, but it did sting and when you'd gotten older it had gone from spankings to groundings. You shake away the random thoughts as you sit up as you realize the footsteps are a little louder than normal. 

Wait... your walls weren't painted a pale lavender... your mind snaps to as you bolt up. You see a pair of booted feet at the end of the bed, just sort of hanging off... You don't wear boots, at least not like these. They look like they might be something some stuck up army guy might wear... or someone who was dressing as one for Halloween, which that wasn't far off really but it was still a good two weeks from now. You look down and you feel a scream tickling the back of your throat as you stare down at a black cover that was haphazardly tossed over a skeleton's leg. You don't remember getting in bed with a bone! You go to move your leg and the bone moves. You stop. Before your brain can fully catch up with you the door slams open and you whip around to see a small skeleton grinning at you. His eye lights are bright and huge in the sockets as he grins at you, he is dressed in a jogging tee that reads 'jog boy star' and a pair of grey sweatpants.

"Good! You're Up! Come On! It's Time To Start The Day!" Before you can react, the skeleton is gone. You want to scream. What is going on?!? What the heck! Where were you?! Who had that been?! Scrambling up you fumbled out of the room, it was rather difficult, you weren't used to being this tall! After nearly slamming into the wall you some how managed to get out of the bedroom and into what looked like a bathroom. You stared in the mirror, slack jawed as a skeleton looked back at you... 


	2. Scrambling

Okay, okay, you could do this. First you had to keep yourself from screaming like an idiot. You didn’t want to attract the attention of... whoever that was. You weren’t an idiot, you were a grown adult too. This was freakin’ insane, but you’d read plenty of books where this sort of crap happened. You never thought it’d happen to you, but you need a cover while you learned about where you were... who you were supposed to be and such. Okay, what did you know? You assessed yourself as you considered it: you were a skeleton, you were tall, you weren’t sure of your gender... 

You closed the bathroom door and lifted up the shirt on the right side and quickly did a count of ribs... okay, if the truth held for all skeletons, human or not, then you were male. You sigh. Great. Okay, you needed to think. What could you do with the information? Wait, hadn’t the other seemed to be happy you were up? Okay... so maybe this guy was usually someone who slept in? Did they do that because they were lazy or just because they had a night job? Well, there was no way to know fully. There was only one thing you could think of that wouldn’t raise immediate suspicion.

“Are You Up Yet?!?” Great, the other skeleton... right... You needed to buy time... but could skeletons even get sick like a human? Well, you were going to try... You fumbled back towards the bed only to be stopped in the hallway by the other skeleton.

“Papyrus? Are You Alright?” 

“i don’t feel my normal self today...” You hated seeing the look of concern on the other’s face, but what else were you going to do?

“Do You Have A Fever? Soul Pains? A Chill?” 

“i’m ... exhausted, a little chilled... and ...” You trail off, not sure what else to say. 

“I Swear If You Say A Pun At The End Of That...” He trailed off but you just shook your head. A pun? Was that a normal thing? Also, okay... so this guy’s name was Papyrus? 

“i... don’t know what day it is... or what i should be doing...” You mutter and drop your gaze as you try to think of something... anything to convince the other skeleton to just leave you alone for the rest of the day... and you wonder, is this permanent? Is this your new life or was it just a one day thing? A sort of Princess and Pauper thing? 

“That Does It! I’m Calling In For You! No Work For You! Back To Bed!” You almost can’t believe that worked!

“I’m Also Making You My Special Tacos!” Tacos? Oh great... well at least now you knew that you could still eat. The other helped you back into bed and even tucked you in. 

“you’re so cool...” You muttered. What an awesome... brother? You weren’t sure. 

“But Of Course! What Are Big Brothers For If Not To Look Out For Their Siblings? Mwehehe!” That was adorable. Great, so this skeleton was supposed to be your brother. The older one too. You hoped you weren’t inconvincing your new host and that this didn’t last long.

“thanks bro.” You muttered, you’d never had a sibling. Your friends and those you knew had talked about having siblings... from grumbling about them being around all the time to praising them for their accomplishments... You had kinda always felt the third wheel, not having had a sibling. Well, this was your chance to at least know a little what that was like, you supposed. You didn’t like that you had to lie to experience this though. You hoped that the other was smart enough to deal with your life... Crap, what were you going to do if you were  _ stuck  _ like this?!

You remembered a Japanese film about this sort of thing... maybe you could... leave something? You rifled through the pockets of the hoodie, man did this guy love sweets or what? He had a LOT of lollipops in one pocket... and a bottle of honey? Talk about a sweet tooth! You set the bottle on the nightstand and continue to dig, fishing up a phone eventually. You knew this was likely an invasion of privacy but you had to try. You tapped the phone and sigh quietly in relief to find that not only does this ancient looking phone work - it wasn’t even a touch screen for crying out loud! - but that it wasn’t locked with a passcode. You flip through the menu looking for anything useful. There were contacts, games, email... a couple of strange programs but while you were curious you decided to mess with them later, where was... ah ha! You found the note program and began to type up a note.

**I don’t know who you are... but we’ve switched bodies. I hope I’m not messing anything up for you. I told your brother that you weren’t feeling well... I’m so out of sorts! This kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen in real life! I hope it’s not permanent... I don’t know how long I can handle being a skeleton before I slip up.**

What else? Before you knew it you’d basically written out your daily schedule to him and how to act as well as who you were. You’d all but written out your life story and you hoped that this whole thing wasn’t permanent. You lay in the bed for hours until you hear the other skeleton leave the house. It’s only when you’re sure his gone that you decide that you have to do some snooping around to keep from acting too oddly when he comes back. Unfortunately, as it turns out, you learn more about his brother than you do about him. It’s like they’re two opposites, his brother is neat, cheerful, a bit childish, but still responsible, older - of course - and it seems they have a loving relationship from all the photos... though in a lot of the photos Papyrus seems to be sleeping or half asleep. Was this guy an insomniac or what? Well, maybe, you knew that it meant he wouldn’t be able to sleep... and that often triggered its opposite, narcolepsy, which often could cause one to just fall asleep randomly. The two didn’t always go hand in hand, but you felt a little bad thinking that he might have one or both. You’d found a book with writing in it but you couldn’t read it. You weren’t fluent in the symbols that were written there. There’d been a key, but you didn’t know where it went to, and a photo with ‘don’t forget’ on it but you didn’t recognize anyone in the photo. Well, things couldn’t get worse, could they?


	3. Thinking Ahead

You felt nothing but relief when you woke up the next day back in your room. You looked around at your walls, your bedding and sighed with relief before looking over at your computer. It was just a dream, right? You stood up and got dressed, ready to face the next day... and then you noticed there was a sticky note on the side of your computer with a question mark on it. You turned on the computer and noticed there was a word document in the middle of your back drop that was just titled: me

You clicked it open, you didn’t remember this and you read what you saw your eyes began to grow. It wasn’t a dream. Hadn’t been a dream. You and a skeleton had switched bodies for a day. Well, it was odd, but at least it wasn’t permanent. You hoped that things were okay on his end... and that things weren’t weird here. Hopefully he was smart enough to get around your dad for the day. You close the document at the sound of familiar, quiet footsteps.

“Hey, are you feeling alright today?” You smile a little at your father, you didn’t much resemble him, according to him anyway, even though your eyes and hair were the same color as his. 

“I’m feeling better, thanks.” 

“Alright, I just wanted to check before I went to run some errands, you still want me to pick up some extra honey?” Honey? Oh... oh dear.

“Um, just in case, that might not be a bad idea.” You didn’t want to think that this could happen again. Then again, in that movie you’d seen it happened several times... so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility but at the same time you didn’t think that him guzzling down honey in your body was good for you. In fact, you  _ knew _ it wasn’t. You weren’t a model from a magazine, but you weren’t unhealthy either. Rather, not on purpose anyway. You couldn’t afford the “healthy eating” habits of the rich or the well off, but you did what you could. You still got some exercise, if not a lot, and you ate as healthy as possible when being middle class in terms of how much you made. While you didn’t pay rent, you did help buy groceries every once in a while and you knew the value of stretching a dollar, as the saying went. You weren’t poor, but at the same time there were many things you didn’t have. You’d been driving the same car you’d gotten when you were sixteen after all. Things were expensive and the economy didn’t seem to be getting any better with passing time as prices on things went up but wages did not follow. Such was life. After you heard the door close you scrambled for a notebook and then grabbed a marker. You wanted to use this notebook as communication just in case it happened again... to pass on information and such. You were about to write his name on the cover when you realized you couldn’t do that. Your dad would wonder about it, it would stick out... so how...? Then you remembered the odd symbols you’d seen... where had you seen those symbols before? You were certain they were a type of font of some kind. 

You looked at the document in front of you and highlighted the whole thing. You spent several minutes going through several different fonts you had never used before you hit upon it. It was wingdings! Of all the... why would Papyrus have a book that was written in wingdings? Was it like some joke or something? Or... maybe it was just a private journal and he didn’t want just anyone reading it. You had to give him some props for that since you never would have guessed and, honestly, who read in wingdings nowadays? It was a really old computer font that no one had used for anything except for relaying coded messages from one computer to another. That had been in the early 1990s though. It was now just a silly font no one had any use for anymore. Except, apparently, this guy who had utilized it in an entire book. He was clearly pretty smart for someone who was known by his own brother to tell puns. Well, this wouldn’t be hard to learn, right? So you began to type the alphabet in arial before typing it again in wingdings below and then you began to write out your message to Papyrus before copying it, albeit rather sloppily, into your notebook. You then erased the words on your computer and hid the document he’d used under a folder named ‘projects’ so that your father wouldn’t just stumble upon it if he decided to borrow your desktop for anything. You were the main user of the computer for different things, mostly for school work when you’d been in college and now you spent time writing stories when the notion took you and watching Youtube videos.

There were also plenty of interesting websites to surf and sometimes, when you were just bored and none of your friends were on, you’d just type in a random subject and read about it. So you had vast bit of knowledge about the most random of things from watching videos and reading websites. As you went about your day, you wondered how he had fared and hoped that you really hadn’t messed anything up on his end. He’d done a good job holding up here, it seemed, you just hoped you’d managed to do the same for him. It was only fair, right?


	4. Sunrise

He woke, as usual, a little groggy; that was nothing new. What was new though was how quiet everything was. Why was it so quiet? Was it still that early? He stared up at the ceiling, odd... he coulda swore there was a crack there. The sheets felt a little different too, not that he cared usually but why did they feel so soft? Whatever. He flopped his arm over his face only to start and shoot the arm up, staring incredulously at the fleshy appendage before him. What in the?! He thought back over the previous night, had he done something he shouldn’t have? No... nothing came to mind, normal night... same routine with his brother. He didn’t even go out drinking with Classic though the other had asked him to come with him and the others... He’d opted out because of a night shift... right. He’d had a night shift as a guard during that evening and hadn’t been home until near midnight. He just stared at the hand before him before he slowly sat up and looked around. He wasn’t in his bed. This wasn’t  _ his _ room. Where was he? He slowly slid from the bed... okay, he was clearly a human. He could see that much, he’d seen humans before so while this was completely out of the realm of anything he knew about, he wasn’t too unfamiliar with things. At least, not so much that he’d just have a total mental break down. A mirror. He needed a mirror! He stumbled from the bed, tangled a bit in the sheets. Boy, this person was smaller than he was used to being, but oh well. He shrugged it off and headed off into a room straight to his left. It was small, but it had a toilet in it; obviously a bathroom. The moment he caught sight of himself he let out a small, choked sound. The figure in the mirror paled, eyes blown wide in shock, mouth agape a little as he just stared at his reflection. He was a full grown  _ woman _ . Of all things. A female... human? Why? 

It was the only question his mind could manage in the haze of his pure shock. He closed the door quietly as he could and turned on the light, even though there was some sunlight coming in from a curtained window. He closed his eyes for a moment. This couldn’t be real, could it? He opened them again, the figure still looked almost as white as a sheet, but other than that she seemed to be a bit calmer. He could feel his ... her? heart racing though. Okay, for the time being, it was just easier to think of it as his while he was obviously trapped in her body. Who was this woman? He heard a name being called by someone, a male. Great, just flippin’ great. She didn’t live alone. Well, that could complicate things. He just hoped that she was a good actress as he opened the bathroom door and stumbled back towards the bedroom. He plopped back down even as an older male entered the room.

“Are you feeling alright?” He seemed concerned. Papyrus wasn’t sure what to tell him, he shook his head. The older male, her father he assumed, put a hand on his forehead.

“Well, you don’t have a fever but you look paler than normal. Do you have work today?” Work? Ah crap. He  _ did _ but... he couldn’t exactly show up to his own workplace as a woman; there’d be no explaining this and who would believe him anyway? Fortunately it seemed that he didn’t need to answer as her father went over to a calendar that hung on the wall near the door.

“Well, I’ll call in for you okay? Just get some sleep sweetheart.” He nodded in response and settled back into the bed, drawing the covers around him. Organics got sick all the time, so it was easy to pretend to just be sick. He hoped that she was smart and was able to figure out something similar with his brother. He had no idea how Sans would react to this... or any of the others either. Shit. That could be a problem if the others dropped by. He lay on the bed, trying to figure out what he could do. Could he still do magic? He tried, but nothing happened... no tiny bones, no levitating items... well that just figured didn’t it? He had no way of knowing what magic she was capable of, if any. Wait, maybe he could... attempt to check her soul? No, he shouldn’t do that. Not without asking first. That was just not done. Being that intimate with a stranger was asking for trouble, even if they didn’t know about it. He wasn’t that kind of a monster honestly and certainly didn’t aspire to be so. That was more up Red’s thing, Mutt likely would do it too and most definitely Lust would. None of the others he was really friends with though would do something like that and he didn’t intend to himself. He had his morals. He had to leave some sort of message for her though... He couldn’t just not. He had so many questions. Nevermind the how of this oddity, he was curious about her. What made her so special that something like this might be possible? Was there something connecting the two of them that he wasn’t aware of? Well, only one way to find out. Seeing the computer on the desk he turned it on and pulled up a new word document then began to type. He left a shortcut to it in the middle of her desktop. He hoped she would see it.

He passed the day snooping around the room when he wasn’t just sleeping. It was kind of like a vacation really. If only a brief one. No responsibilities, no nagging from the other skeletons, no loud voices to interrupt his naps or anything. For once, it was nice. He loved his brother dearly, but sometimes he just needed some peace and quiet to get some real rest. Between naps he began to learn about this woman, she apparently had a job of some kind but he didn’t know what kind exactly. It was hard to tell if anything in the closet was her uniform or just some random clothes. He also found she had a love for anime, art and reading. She had a bookshelf full of fiction. That delighted him to no end, after all, he spent a lot of his time writing fiction himself. He was trying to work out a story to get published and had, periodically, sent in poetry and other such things to various magazines. Trying to get his name out there in the world. So far he’d been met with minimal success, but then again he didn’t put a lot of energy into it either. Simply following the whims of his writing muses. He had a feeling that, if this was going to happen again, then he should figure out something more concrete in terms of communication. Not that he was expecting it would happen again, just that he knew if it could happen once it most certainly could occur again. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is based off a prompt I got from MKCreates on Tumblr.

It happened again. You knew this now by the sound of the footsteps down the hall. How could you not know? And by footsteps you meant more what sounded like half an army marching down the stairs. That had been the norm for the last two months and you knew you probably weren’t going to get used to it. Not like you had the switching bodies. It had happened once a month, it seemed, it was always the same date. Regardless of the day of the week that said date actually landed on. As of two months ago, for some reason the entire crew of skeletons... at least the ones Stretch - as you’d learned his nickname was - had talked about ended up buying a place where they could live with their friends. At least that was how he put it. At this point, the secret was out to Sans, whose nickname was Blue; there was no way you could keep lying to his brother and once he’d been let in on the secret he’d been helping you out in little subtle ways. Something that was surprising to Stretch, apparently. Blue was just too pure for you to keep up the lies with, as much as you knew you could under normal circumstances you just couldn’t pretend to be his brother when you didn’t know enough to even begin to act like it. With a lot of coaching and staying inside through those many days the last half year, you’d picked up on many things and while you still were a little unbalanced when it came to moving around as a skeleton who was clearly taller than you were used to, you had most of the act down. It helped that you shared some things, like a love for books so it wasn’t unusual for you to pick up a book that was just sitting around and start reading it. You did that a lot to avoid conversation with any of the others, more specifically Red and Mutt.

You’d quickly learn that Red and Mutt were instant friends and had a sort of lewd sense of humor and mindset a lot of the time. You were all adults, of course, but seriously, those two took it to unusual levels sometimes. You’d seen first hand during a night of drinking just how bad those two could be and you were just glad they didn’t look your way that evening because you were pretty sure you’d have been a target if you were, well, yourself rather than a skeleton who just seemed to flush over all the things that had been heard. Of course Blue and Papyrus had gone to bed before that event had occurred, Edge, who was Red’s brother, had declined to participate due to having work the following morning but the rest of the household had not qualms about drinking themselves stupid for the evening. That wasn’t a problem though, the problem was pretending to drink without getting drunk because you had no idea how bad it could be if you were drunk or what you might say. You’d never been drunk in your life anyway, buzzed, sure, but not straight up drunk. You didn’t want to find out if a skeleton could puke even though he didn’t have any physical guts. At least not first hand. It was an evening you’d rather forget anyway since with as drunk as Red and Mutt had gotten the two had ended up making out and boy was that something to see... or rather, you wished you hadn’t seen. The trouble wasn’t the two of them, though. The trouble came in the form of the second tallest of the skeletons of the household. Unlike the other two he wasn’t as quick to drown his troubles or sorrows in a bottle. He wasn’t a light weight, but he clearly wasn’t out to get drunk either. He’d been keeping a socket on you the entire time. 

“you usually drink more.” Classic said, eyeing you. You shrugged and made the excuse that you were just doing it because they were, not because you aimed to get drunk; you said you didn’t feel like it and the other had nodded, but he’d been watching you the rest of the evening until he’d passed out with the other two into a booze coma. You knew he wasn’t drunk, far from it, but the drink helped put him to sleep it seemed. 

You shook the thoughts of that night out of your head as you rummaged around for something clean. Stretch would almost never change his clothes, but you detested feeling dirty. You pulled out clean clothes, rumpled them after putting them on by laying down in the bed like you’d slept in the clothes and then rummaged around for one of his hoodies. You’d quickly learned that he never wandered out of his room without his hoodie except on the days laundry was done and seeing as you spotted one you guessed laundry day wasn’t today. Stifling a sigh, you pulled on the thing, it felt a little stiff in spots and you imagined that was because of him spilling honey on himself. He really did have a major sweet tooth and while you liked honey just fine, drinking it was a whole different thing... still, you had to keep up appearances. Though it amazed you that he still had pearly white teeth with no signs of cavities with all the honey he drank and the sugary snacks he usually had on him. You usually opted for the various lollipops he had in his pocket over drinking straight honey. You’d leave that to him, why he did it you did not know, or rather, you’d asked but hadn’t received an answer for that. While you’d learned things about him one of the things you’d learned straight up was that he was a very private soul. He did not like sharing his secrets with others and barely said anything about himself though he’d spend pages talking about his brother. Speaking of pages... you reached for the journal near his nightstand that he’d set up for you. You flipped through the pages to see what it said:

keep clear of red for a while. i played a prank on him and he didn’t take it well. 

You considered that was a must as you had no idea how to protect yourself so you couldn’t go picking fights or anything. You knew monsters could do that and you figured you could hold your own for a while if you were in your own body, but being in his was a whole different thing. You didn’t know how monsters used magic, even if you knew they had it. You’d been keeping track of monsters since they’d appeared on the surface in 2015. You knew a bit about them in general and had been welcoming to them, even though many humans had not been. Not that you blamed them, a lot were resentful only for the fact that they saw the monsters as threats to job security more than as actual threats due to being what they were. People were more concerned than ever about making money then about what their new neighbors looked like. It was both a good and a bad thing. The economy right now was just a bad one to end up in. There was no getting around that regardless of what you wished. You figured this was going to be another day just sitting around, reading and what not, until you heard a voice as you headed into the hallway, the voice was downstairs so you weren’t sure who said it.

“I’m Sorry, You Bought HOW MANY CHICKENS?!” 

“you said you wouldn’t be mad.” Was the response. It sounded like Classic, maybe this would be interesting to see. You headed downstairs of the house and straight to the kitchen.


End file.
